Why Accredit Your Program?

In recent years the marketplace has seen a growing number of certification programs emerge, evaluating individual’s competencies on a host of skills and in many fields.Unfortunately, not all certification programs are structured and administered in a manner that can reasonably assure the general public that a specific certification program is achieving what it claims to achieve.

Just as your organization’s certification program seeks to assure consumers that the successful applicant has been evaluated by a neutral third party and has been found to hold the core competencies to fulfill the tasks associated with his/her certification – the ICAC provides a similar assurance that the entire certification program has been evaluated by a neutral third party and conforms with industry best practices.

For a number of years, the ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) has established guidelines that well-run certification programs should follow. This standard, ISO/IEC 17024, sets the “gold standard” to which industry certification programs can aspire.

The ICAC’s team can assess your program against the latest international standards. This achieves several goals.

First, the evaluation process may identify significant ways to improve the program you offer to your members and the industry at large.

Secondly, after completion of the evaluation and implementation of any corrective measures identified, you may market to the industry that your certification program has indeed met the highest standard of industry best practices.

And finally, increasingly more and more entities (corporations and government agencies) require that your certification program be accredited by a third party before they will endorse or participate in the program.